TRANSCRIPT
I’ve made several different videos about the value in grown children breaking from their parents. I even wrote a book on it back in, I think, 2013. One of the surprising things that I’ve had a lot of, as the result of writing that book and making videos on it, is I have had parents reach out to me saying, “My children broke away from me. I’m estranged from my children. My children don’t want to talk to me. They don’t want a relationship with me.” Or, “One of my children is gone, and I don’t know how to connect with him. Can you help me? Can you give me any advice?” Many times, they come in very heartfelt ways, and they say, “It’s strange that I’m reaching out to you, who made a video or wrote a book on the exact opposite perspective, but I felt maybe you would have some insight into how I might reconnect with my child,” especially if my child is saying many of the same things that you advocate for, that you say in your book and in your videos. I’ve actually talked to quite a few parents in return. I’ve wanted to help them, and it’s an interesting thing. Sometimes, maybe even help them make some progress. So what have I told parents? This is what I want to make a video on. It might come across as a little strange; it might seem like, “Gosh, this seems contradictory.” But actually, I’m not against parents having good relationships with their children. I’m actually all for that. So what do I tell parents? Well, the main thing that I tell parents when they’ve reached out to me, and I would say to parents in general, is take responsibility for your behavior. Look at the past. See what you’ve done. See the harm that you caused or may have caused your child or your children. See the ways in which you’ve caused them pain. See the ways in which you may have abandoned them without maybe even realizing it at the time. See the ways in which you neglected them. See the flaws in your parenting, in your parenting style, in your parenting attitude. Things you may have done wrong 20, 30 years ago—maybe you’ve changed—but what did you do wrong? How did this negatively affect your child? Take responsibility for it. Now, what does it mean to take responsibility for it? What I see as taking responsibility for the errors that we’ve done, the bad behaviors that we have done, is first just in our own relationship with ourselves, acknowledging what we’ve done, acknowledging the unhealthy things that we’ve done. Also, acknowledging the negative consequences it’s had on other people and taking responsibility for that, saying, “Yes, it’s true I did that.” Then a second part is changing the behavior, not doing that anymore, and also not pretending like it didn’t happen. So owning it, being public about it. Does this mean calling up your kid and saying, “Listen, I know you don’t want anything to do with me, but this is what I did, and this is what I did that was wrong,” etc., etc., etc.? Well, that’s another thing to think about. That’s a separate idea, and I think that’s something maybe to hold off on but definitely to consider. But first, the most important thing is to know it in one’s relationship with one’s own self—what one did that was wrong, that was unhealthy, the harm that one caused—and really to think about it. I think it’s also very important for parents to consider, “Why did they do that? Why did I do that behavior? Why did I cause harm to my children?” I think it’s really important for parents to look at their relationship with their own parents because often when parents are estranged from their children, when their children don’t want anything to do with them, it’s a sign that the parents did some very unhealthy things in their relationship with their children that actually were replications of what happened in the parents’ relationship with their own parents. Maybe the child, their own children, are saying, “That’s no longer acceptable,” where often the parents themselves didn’t figure it out in time and didn’t put those boundaries with their own parents. So I think it’s really valuable for people who have children who don’t want anything to do with them to take the opportunity, take this distance, take all that pain that comes up from being rejected by their own children, and use it to grow. Use it to study themselves, to look at themselves, to write down their own history. So if I’m speaking to you as a parent yourself, write down your own history. Write down the history of your behavior, but also write down the history of your childhood. Write down the dynamics of your relationship with their own parents to see maybe there are some connections there and to work toward making those connections. Now, another thing is to listen to what your children, your estranged children, are saying is their reason for taking distance from you and to try to sort it out. Take it very, very seriously, whatever they say. To really listen to it, to take it in, to come in with an assumption that actually there are some very, very healthy reasons why your child doesn’t want to be close to you. Now, that doesn’t mean that every time an adult child takes distance from their parents that the reason the child says for taking distance is always correct. For instance, “You have a responsibility to give me money. You have a responsibility to pay for my life, and I’m 27 years old, and I want more money, and you stopped giving me money. You cut me off. Well, screw you! I’m not going to have anything to do with you anymore.” It’s like, “Well, is that a good reason to break from one’s parents because they’re not paying for your life when you’re 27?” I could argue maybe it’s actually not the best reason. But underneath it, there may be other things that actually are very healthy reasons to take distance. Like, “Wait, why was the parent giving money to this adult child in their late 20s up until that point? Maybe there were a lot of weird boundaries going on.” So I think, again, anything the child says why they’re taking distance is worth considering. Also, a lot of times what I hear is when adult children break away from their parents, the reasons they give are actually very legitimate. They’re actually saying very, very healthy reasons why they’re breaking away. They’re not actually incorrect. They’re saying, “You mistreated me. You abused me in this way. You don’t talk to me in a respectful way. You’re not healthy toward me. You’re not kind.” Maybe you were good in some ways, but you did some horrible things. Maybe I need to take distance from you for a while. This is a bottom line: regardless of what an adult child’s reason is for taking distance from a parent, underneath it, there’s always, always, always some healthy reason for it. There’s always some healthy nugget of truth in why they’re taking distance. The adult child may not always know what that reason is; the parent certainly may not always know what the reason is. But underneath it, there actually is always a healthy reason. So that, for me, is a healthy assumption to have because also if the parent was so great and so consistent and so healthy, that child would not want to break away. It just wouldn’t make sense. They’d want to continue that relationship with that really healthy, loving parent who historically was healthy and loving. So if they’re breaking away, something went wrong. Something didn’t go right. Now, another thing that can be really helpful for parents to do in these situations is to find someone to talk to—often someone outside of the family system—who they can bounce ideas off of and get feedback from, and get feedback that’s actually fairly objective. Often when parents go to their circle, their friends, they can go to other people in the family, often what they get is feedback that’s not very objective. Often they get people who pretty quickly side with the parents, and it kind of makes sense because a lot of times I think people seek out advice or counsel, or they seek out some sort of sounding board and someone who is going to tell them what they want to hear—someone who’s not going to tell them something that’s going to be really painful. I think a lot of times in the situations where children…
Have really pulled away from their parents and don’t want anything to do with them. The underlying objective truth is actually going to be painful for the parents. So parents, if they’re gonna get someone to bounce these ideas off of, they need someone who’s going to have the strength to be able to say, “Yeah, actually you really do have a part in it, and actually you have the bigger part in it because you were the parent. You were the one who set up this child-parent dynamic. You had the power in that historical relationship.”
And so if this dynamic gets ruptured, and if this is screwed up, actually you were the one who created the basis of this dynamic. Now, it can be very, very hard for parents to find anybody who is going to be objective with them because a lot of times we have a whole society, we have communities that are based on the sanctity of parents. A lot of people don’t want to give parents the bad news. They don’t want to tell them, “Listen, you’re really screwed up, and there’s reasons your kid wants to get away from you.” It’s actually hard, I think, to find therapists who will say this.
I think a lot of therapists, for starters, are parents and more intuitively side with the perspective of the parents. But I think it’s also hard even for therapists to tell people things that they don’t want to hear. I remember once I heard someone say, “Yeah, going to therapy is actually going to get the bad news.” Going to have someone who’s going to tell you the bad news about yourself. And I thought, “Wow, actually that person is going to a pretty good therapist.”
Because I think a lot of therapists, to keep the money flowing in, to keep that relationship with a client, to keep something coming back again and again and again, to keep the comfort in the relationship. And this is not just therapists who this can be. This can be ministers, this can be friends, this can be family friends, these can be other sorts of counselors, coaches. People want to tell people what they want to hear. A lot of time what I’ve seen is when parents are in pain from basically being rejected by their children, they want someone who’s going to make them feel good again.
A lot of times I think the rejection that parents feel from having their kids break away from them, all that pain that comes up from the parents, is actual abandonment. That really is leftover abandonment from their own childhood. It’s their own history of abandonment, and sometimes their children can kick that up in them. And so when a therapist or a counselor or coach, minister, whatever it is, friend hears that parent’s pain, a lot of times they want to quell that pain, and they sometimes will sell out the parent’s children.
I’ve heard it again and again and again. Therapists say, “Oh, your kid has screwed up. Your kid is an addict too. Your kid is a, you know, as a narcissist. Your kid is a sociopath. Your kid is selfish. Your kid never took you seriously. Your kid is rejecting all that you hold dear. Your kid has turned against the ways in which you raised them correctly.” And I don’t buy that.
One of the big reasons is that if children grow up to have a lot of problems, if children grow up to be screwed up, if they have all these addictions or mental problems or whatever other problems they’re going through, where did they learn that bad behavior? What kind of environment raised them to be screwed up? So the bottom line, if I can sum it all up, what is the best way for a parent to reconnect with their child when they are estranged from their children?
The best way is to take responsibility for their own bad behavior, historical and recent and present, to behave in a more respectful manner to their children, to actually listen to their children and hear whatever it is that the child is saying is their reasons for breaking away. It’s the job of the parent to really, in a fundamental way, to assess the objectivity of what the child is saying, to really make sense of it and to weigh it, and to really come in with the assumption that for whatever reason the child is breaking away, whatever they say the reasons are, fundamentally good, even if it’s not exactly the reasons the child is saying.
So to really figure out and understand, why would this kid want to get away from me? Why would a child want to break away from their parents? And to understand that fundamentally there must have been something that was troubling or screwed up in that historical relationship and also in the recent relationship. And also to assume that the child’s breaking away, at some level, even though it may not always look that way, is a striving for the child to become more independent and more healthy, and for the parent to respect that.
Also, the fundamental thing that a parent can do to try to rebuild their relationship with their child is to change their unhealthy behavior, to become healthier. Not just to apologize, to admit and say, “I’m sorry,” but yeah, that might be a real part of it. And I think ultimately it would be to say, “Yeah, acknowledge this is what I did wrong,” to say it at some point, to put it out there. But the important thing is not just to apologize and keep doing the bad behavior because I’ve seen that happen again and again and again and again.
Parents say they do acknowledge some of their bad behavior or maybe even a lot of their bad behavior, but they don’t change. At some fundamental level, they keep doing it. So to me, the most important thing in rebuilding any sort of healthy relationship between a parent and a child is for the parent to look at their unhealthy behavior and change it. And how do you change it? The way to change it is for the parent to continue looking at themselves, to study their own history, to see the ways in which they were abandoned, mistreated, or traumatized when they were children, and to grieve that, to heal that, and to regain, or maybe even to gain it in the first place, their sense of becoming an integrated human being.
To become more mature, to really grow up, and in that way to be able to be more loving to their child, to set better boundaries with their child, to be more respectful of their child, to not give too much. Because a lot of times I think parents can try to make up for what they didn’t give their children when the children were young by giving them too much when they’re adults, and that’s a different form of disrespect. So basically to have healthier boundaries, to treat that adult like the adult, to respect the feelings of the child, but to not cave in to them, but also ultimately to become a healthy adult themselves.